From Goodreads: “All Amber wants is a little bit of love. Her mum has never been the caring type, even before she moved to California, got remarried and had a personality transplant. But Amber’s hoping that spending the summer with her can change all that.”

This book is the second in what is known as the “Spinster Club” series. The first of these four books, “Am I Normal Yet?”, I read last year when I was on holiday. I say read – I loved it so much I devoured it in around 24 hours. I’ve decided now a few months later to return the the series and read books two and three directly following each other as I’ve had both sat on my Kindle waiting to be read since before I read book one.

As much as this book features around a different character to “Am I Normal Yet?” I think I’d still recommend reading that book first. You could potentially read this book as a standalone, but I think the references to Evie and her battle with OCD would go slightly misunderstood, and as Lottie is a very passionate feminist, I think people may not understand her character very well.

“How Hard Can Love Be?” centres around Amber, who we met in book one, who has travelled to America to spend a summer working in a summer camp with her mother who she hasn’t seen for two years. It was interesting to get the small flashes of Amber’s memories of her mother before she left, which aren’t very pleasant as her mother was an alcoholic. A lot of Amber’s interactions with her mother explore Amber’s feeling of abandonment at the fact that her mother in her eyes left her behind with a stepfamily she doesn’t get along with. While it was nice to see their relationship come to terms at the end of the novel, it was nice that it wasn’t fully resolved, and you knew that it still needed a bit of work on both sides following it’s conclusion.

The primary storyline for Amber in this book, however, is her relationship with Kyle, a college student working at the camp. It was refreshing to meet a romantic interest who was, in his own word, ‘boring’. So many teen romance books feature the ‘bad boy’ but Kyle was nothing but genuine throughout their entire relationship in the book, and it was nice to focus on a relationship where the guy was actually trustworthy.

This is only my second read from author Holly Bourne, but as I read this book in just two days, I can confidently say that she clearly writes very well. The writing is compelling, and she creates incredibly vivid and likeable characters. I’m going straight into book three of this series, and I’m pretty sure I have other books by her sat in my Kindle library. I know a lot of people love her work, and I’m definitely fast falling into that group.

Looking forward to reading more about the Spinster Club’s adventures 🙂